Fun Times

Where I last left off, our family had enjoyed a crab feed and I was about to do my “long run” before the BIG GAME.

I mapped a 7 mile loop around Stanford and Palo Alto. It took me exactly 1 hour including two red light stops (and that photo op). I enjoyed every minute of the run and even explored some new streets with gorgeous homes. I need to run around outside more, especially near Stanford.

Post run I think I showered (?) put on a Sharks shirt & 49ers leggings (team spirit!) and drove with Kyle up to SF to watch the Super Bowl at our friend Rob’s apartment. Over 20 people gathered, snacked, watched, ooh & ahh-ed… mostly at Katy Perry and the commercials. LOL

The ending was crazyyyyy. What a great game! So much better than last year’s Seahawks blow out.

Then, it was back to work. And time for jumping jacks. Clearly.

One thing I love about the job: The People… we are a wacky, wacky bunch.

Exhibit A: Joe’s charging cord monocle.

Exhibit B: Razor scooter tricks.

On Tuesday night (this was lasssst week peeps), I went to my mom’s house since I was already in the South Bay following a meeting. Shirley made dinner and while we ate we shared our rose & thorn for the day (such a good table topic). Then, Nicole and I drove to the grocery store to get ice cream. Pretty rad night.

On Wednesday we had lunch catered and a big cloud CRM company *cough* gifted us Kara’s Cupcakes. Talk about a sweet treat!

We also had Arts & Crafts hour while prepping for an event happening the following day.

Wednesday night, we all went offsite for a happy hour at St. James Gate. Who knew this random place near auto repair shops would be so big? They have live music multiple nights a week, a huge outdoor patio, and space for ping pong, billiards, and karaoke. Definitely a good spot!

And if enough stuff hadn’t already happened on Wednesday….. Kyle and I walked to his favorite Mexican spot, La Morenita, for a late bite to eat. Their (rotisserie?) chicken tostadas are super good!

Thursday morning (after like 2 hours of sleep, blerg) I drove up to SF for a SaaS Exec event. Our company had a pretty big presence (insert ginormous booth) and our CEO spoke on a panel.

And I had an opportunity to reprise my role as Sally the Customer Success superhero.

Gotta fight churn, ya know?

Although it was a great event, it was SERIOUSLY lacking female representation. As a sponsor of the event, we had ~7 women present. I only saw maybe 15 other women the whole time. (Side note: my coworker Sam shared this NYT article about the lopsided perception of men & women who offer to help in the workplace. Great read!)

Last Friday was fairly basic, minus dinner at The Melt in Stanford Shopping Center.

For some reason, they sent us a “Buy $20, Take $10 Off” coupon so Kyle and I trekked over during the rainstorm and shared a cookies & cream shake + cheese fries. We both ordered chicken sandwiches (mine with mushrooms & mustard, his with buffalo sauce). Once we got home, we watched two episodes of Silicon Valley and hit the hay.

The following day (Saturday) was super fun and deserves to be the highlight of it’s own post so I’ll save that for next time.

Hellooooo… I took those orange vanilla + chocolate coconut cupcakes over to my mom’s house Sunday afternoon and then my mom, David, Nicole, and I drove to Kirigan Cellars in Gilroy to deliver and say “Happy Birthday!” to Sarah’s mom, Sylvia. Everyone was wearing festive head gear and enjoying the 6 pours per tasting.

We stayed for about an hour, and had a chance to catch up with everyone before we hit the road for Oakland!

For Christmas, our parents gifted us tickets to the Warriors v. Celtics game. We had no idea that we would be Row 2!!!! You wouldn’t know it because Nicole stopped (paused?) blogging back in the day but she is a big Warriors fan. She roped David into rooting almost exclusively for Golden State and he was definitely excited to be this close to the action.

The Warriors won with 114 points to the Celtics’ 111 points. We missed Klay’s kickass game by two days (darn!) but still saw a great game with a pretty nice dunk by Steph Curry. After the game we walked down to the floor and took a family selfie. :)

Fast forward to Thursday… Nicole stayed over and we went out to dinner at Pizza My Heart. I worked in a different location when I was in high school so you could say that a piece of my heart belongs to Pizza My Heart. <3 Plus, their D’Lex is my fave.

Friday I went to the 5:30 bar method class (in an effort to break my 2-week streak of closin’ up the office :( on Fridays). It worked! I was home and on the couch at 6:30 and it felt so, so good to just chill. On Saturday I went back to BM (basically my second home) and added another star to my name. There’s a gold star challenge going on and I’m now at 12 stars. :)

After BM I usually go to Starbucks but 1) it was crazy crowded and 2) Krizia texted me saying she was in downtown Palo Alto grabbing brunch at Coupa Cafe. I asked her if I could crash and she obliged! I swear I took a photo of our cappuccino, espresso, crepe, and quiche… but it’s nowhere on my phone! (So you get this gif :) We had a much needed girl talk sesh and strategized for Ragnar So Cal …yup, it’s relay time again!

I made sure to get in my tempo run of the week (details below) before showering and heading out to a crab feed with my family. Last time (2013) I ate waaaayyyy too much so this year I tried to keep things under control. It’s a charity event that David loves to support, and we were game to get our hands dirty (literally). Nicole and her bf were also there! I told him to tell her to blog again, fwiw.

They are so cute together :)

With Super Bowl Sunday upon us, I’m making sure to get my long run (7 miler) in before the festivities. Details on that next post!

So instead of talking about this weeks’ haps I’ll just back it up to where I left off, Milad’s bday get-together and tandem bike ride for ice cream… that was Saturday/Sunday. Monday was pretty typical, except for the late night prepping for our company’s big announcement on our upcoming conference. We revealed the keynote speaker (Moneyball author Michael Lewis!) on Tuesday and had some good buzz, which was nice.

If you have friends in the Customer Success space, you gotta tell them to go to Pulse!

Last week I finally used this long skinny box to make my treadmill more desk-friendly. It’s amazing how far you can walk, at a comfortable pace, while responding to emails and finishing small tasks. I had the TM at about a 3.0 mph / 3.0 incline and covered 3 miles in 1 hour. Wait, is that actually slow? In either case, the time flew by :)

Every Wednesday we’re now getting catered lunch at work. Last week it was this amazing spread of massaged kale, quinoa/rice, cauliflower/sunchokes, chicken, roasted carrots, and kabocha squash. This week we had thai food. Luckily, we usually have leftovers so that means 2 lunches are covered each week!

Plus, that way we get to laugh, eat, hang out during the “lunch” hour that no one ever takes.

Later that evening, Nicole came over for her weekly sleepover. :D But first, dinner. We went to the trusty Curry Up Now brick and mortar in downtown Palo Alto. She had her veggie burrito and I had a naan smothered in tikka masala. We were both bundled up in Cal Poly sweatshirts, the picture of sexiness.

After dinner, we stopped in CVS for candy. I have a problem. And Nicole called me out on it, via snapchat.

On Thursday of last week, we had a fun company happy hour at the nearby bowling alley, Bel Mateo Bowl. Almost everyone who was in the office that day made it over, including a few faces that used to work at Gainsight. Everyone that I’ve worked with at this company is so special, it warms my heart to know that ex-coworkers still hang out with us on the reg.

After bowling, Kyle and I went out for a lil dinner date in Palo Alto. We revisited the ever-so-popular Oren’s Hummus because, for some reason, there was only a 10 minute wait. We ordered the shnitzel de noir (breaded chicken breast, mashed sweet potatoes, and garlic green beans), a side of the babaganoush eggplant, and the hummus triangle (classic hummus with slow cooked fava beans, garbanzo beans, and tahini). Everything was soooooo good. Oren’s you are busy for good reason.

And then it was Friday! This is where I point out to you what my life looks like at my desk. 3 Cups. Water, maybe fill it once a day (I know, so bad). Coffee, up to 3 cups per day. Chocolate covered raisins, easily go through 2 cups worth. I mean, I hope not… but that’s what it feels like. THEY ARE MY KRYPTONITE.

I stayed a little late at work on Friday… and then drove straight to Antonio’s Nut House to meet Kyle and his soccer buddies. One of them even gave me this cute cupcake from Kara’s! So nice.

Saturday morning I woke up for 9:30 bar (as usual) and then went grocery shopping for cupcake ingredients….

My high school bff Sarah asked me to make some cupcakes for her mom’s birthday party and I was more than happy to get busy in the kitchen. I made 2 dozen orange zest + vanilla cupcakes and 2 dozen chocolate coconut cupcakes. I made a giant batch of Italian meringue buttercream (plain) and then decided to frost them on Sunday.

I remembered how fun it was to bake, but also how tiring it is to stand up for multiple hours in a row. Dang, I’m lazy.

For dinner, I combined some of our leftover Oren’s hummus with hummus in our fridge, from Safeway. I plopped it all into this beautiful bowl my mom gave me as a present. Then I added toasted pita, sliced carrots, and a slightly modified version of The Kitchn’s mediterranean turkey meatballs.

The meatballs were seriously good! I made quite a few substitutions, and the recipe still held up!

On Sunday, after morning bar method, I frosted these beauties….

I love the part of piping on frosting and decorating with “toppings” – it’s so satisfying to see the final product.

And that’s where I’ll leave off for now since it’s getting late!

Here’s a run down of week 3’s workouts. Spoiler alert, I actually did every workout as planned!!

So, the plan had a 5K race on Sunday but I didn’t have a actual 5k race on my schedule. That’s why I didn’t feel the need to actually rest on Saturday as suggested. I decided on Sunday to just run on the TM at a comfortably fast pace and see how far I could push the mph without dying. In some ways it was like a 5K progression run.

I loved the intervals I did on Wednesday, especially when my bff Krizia ran up next to me when I was on my final cool down! Intervals are one of my favorite things because it feels like you’re gonna pass out but you only have to maintain the pace for a short amount of time. Anything is possible for 400 meters!

You know what else happens on Monday? #PrinceFarming hahaha…. this season of The Bachelor is so ridiculous already. But it’s a great excuse to get together with Sarah and Cindy (and Mike and Mark) for dinner, dessert, and laughs. Cindy tempted us with a picture of this chocolate cake earlier in the day and I could not WAIT to dig in.

For dinner we had slow-cooker braised short ribs with noodles and biscuits. I’ll admit I went back for seconds, it was unreal.

After dinner we watched the college football championship game and skipped the Bachelor. JUST KIDDING! (btw, go Buckeyes) The tractor race in bikinis? You’ve got to be kidding me. And keeping Miss Crazy Pants? Ugh.

Nothing interesting happened on Tuesday, but on Wednesday I met up with Nicole after work to go get our hair done! We drove to the neighborhood we grew up in and had the fabulous Kalee make us pretty again. Nicole and Kalee were BFFs in 2nd grade and when we reconnected on Facebook we saw all of her awesome hair magic.

We both cut our hair shorter (#twinning) ….I lost about 10 inches at the longest point. I’m loving the change!

Thursday morning I woke up suuuuper early (at my mom’s) and carpooled with Nicole to Redwood Shores and then drove the rest of the way to San Francisco for our team’s offsite. You know what’s fun? Parking in the Tenderloin. And then finding the nearest [hipster] coffee shop (Machine Coffee) to get a red eye and blueberry scone.

We spent all day in this cool coworking space run by wework. I love it when our whole team gets together! :)

After dinner we walked a few blocks to Farmer Brown for drinks and apps. I ordered their grand gimlet ($11) – blue coat gin, lime, pavan muscat liqueur, muddled sage & celery. WOW… this is a drink I want Katie to try. We shared their fried pickles, sweet potato fries, shrimp & okra hush puppies, and pork sliders. Everything I tried was great and I’ll definitely remember this spot next time I’m near Union Square/Market and looking for a “cool” spot. (Katie, it’s across the street from Mikkeller Bar!)

Friday I worked late and then had no motivation to work out once I got home. Pretty sure I fell asleep early. After a 9:30 am bar method class on Saturday, I treated myself to Philz Coffee. I wish they had a rewards program so that I could rationalize choosing Philz over Starbucks (damn you and your gold star rewards).

I spent all day watching the Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce episodes stock piled on the DVR. That show is actually really good! Later that night, Kyle made us a healthy dinner of panko-crusted baked chicken with brussels sprouts and leftover quinoa/beans. I was about to go out and celebrate a coworker’s birthday so a solid dinner was necessary.

Milad’s birthday celebration in Mountain View was fun!!! I love this little Gainster crew. Full details made it to my snap story, but not the blog ;)

Tin Pot Creamery is in the same shopping center as bar method. Every time I go to a night class I have to hold back from getting 10 scoops of everything. It’s not the cheapest craft ice cream shop in the neighborhood if you know what I’m saying. But their flavors are unique and delicious.

I got a scoop of purple sweet potato with cinnamallows and a scoop of peanut butter fudge brownie. Yum!!

After eating pulled pork for dinner I worked up enough motivation to do my “long” run of the week (only 6 mi since it’s week 2 of the plan). Speaking of … here’s my recap from this week’s workoutzzz